we got through our appointments today and have some updates. we met with the oculoplastic surgeon today and they want to wait to decide if little annabel needs surgery. thats a good thing! let me explain more though. there are two things going on with her eye. the primary problem is that she has a scratch on her cornea. scratches like this normally heal on their own within a few days unless something else continues to irritate them. if they do not heal then they can scar which would most likely affect her vision and could cause major problems down the road (like not being able to see out of her left eye...). then there is the second thing. annabel has what is called entropion. this is when the eyelid flips inward and the eyelashes irritate and scratch the eyeball. entropion can happen mechanically (meaning caused by swelling or squeezing your eyes too tight) or can be congenital (meaning the eyelid is "malformed"). the past two days she has had a pressure patch on to keep the eyelids out. today at the appointment the lashes were out and have stayed out since we left. the surgeons feel this is a good sign that it was caused by the swelling of her eye caused by conjunctivitis she got at birth. there is no need to operate if this is the case so we definitely hope they are right. assuming the entropian stops and her lashes stop irritating her eyeball, the scratch on the cornea should heal up within a few days. then she will be fixed! wow! you probably never thought that you would know so much about eyelids...the second appointment was to meet her pediatrician. she has been eating very well the past few days but is just maintaining her weight instead of putting more on. the doctor is hopeful that this due to her hypermetabolic state (all these medical terms...) caused by the stress and infection in her eye. and that she just needs more food. as i explained we are working on fixing her eye so now we just need to give her more food. the doctor gave us some good recommendations so hopefully we'll get that worked out soon. she has another weigh-in this friday.
cheryl is doing better as well. the fever from the mastitis has gone down and the pain comes and goes. she is still on her meds so we hope that the infection and the clog will be gone and gone very soon.
so there you have it, there it is. cheryl and i were comparing her time during pregnancy with life after delivery this afternoon. both have been textbook experiences - the difference is that beginning september 9 we definitely starting working out of the part of the textbook that we skipped over and thought we would never have to read...
ps - you will never know how special the prayers, messages, notes of encouragement, free meals and positive thoughts have been. thank you...pps - you can tell by the photo that her umbilical cord fell off. we have officially upgraded to a cordless model... :)
love, a & c & a
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